seriously cal-bar F-U shortening the exam to two days

"The top 4 schools or so in CA typically average that but afterwards there is a steep drop off."

Oh, I agree. But I thought we were talking about in general, not just for the CalBar.

"California has a notoriously difficult bar, but what about states with a 80-90% pass rate? If you can't pass an exam that 80-90% of your classmates passed, should you really be allowed to give legal advice?"

A lot of states were barely above the 50% mark recently. I want to say WV was in the 48% range (I know a few were below coin toss odds)

Again, if you have a better link to national bar averages, that would be great. The original comments, as we discussed, was about jurisdictions other than California.

Next, February traditionally has the lowest bar passage rates. So it doesn't make sense to:1) Use February bar passage rates; and2) Use California stats; and3) Misconstrue the ones you use (First-time Pepperdine takers in Feburary had a 70% rate on that exam- you were looking at the "repeaters" table- IOW, the students who already had failed the exam).

Having taken, and passed, more than one Bar exam (including California), I will reiterate that the problem is not the difficulty of the exam. They are rather trivial to pass, and amount to nothing more than a minor barrier to entry.

Even if the exam has a high pass rate, it's useful if it keeps out the 10-20% who probably shouldn't have been admitted to law school in the first place. Law schools themselves are willing to admit just about anybody at this point, and will graduate them with minimally passing grades. Thus, the bar exam is serving an important gatekeeper function. Not everyone who manages to graduate from law school can automatically be entrusted to handle the public's legal needs.

Do you think a pilot should be able to fly commercially without taking the FAA checkrides as long as they graduate from flight school?

I do believe that there are plenty of modifications that could be made to both the bar exam and law school curricula which would result in better legal training. I'm all for that.

Interestingly, I think the primary result of such a rule would be that the average non-ABA student would be more knowledgeable on bar topics than the average ABA grad. I don't know about you, but if I didn't have to take the bar, I wouldn't have bothered with learning 90% of that stuff. But I'm glad I did.

The FAA argument is right on point, same with doctors, or any other licensed professional.

The bar exam is hard and it should not be made easier, because a few more people are having trouble passing. If literally nobody was capable of passing the bar exam then I see a change, but nearly 4,000 out of 7,000 people passed the July 2015 exam. http://admissions.calbar.ca.gov/Portals/4/documents/gbx/JULY2014STATS121814_R.pdf . It is a difficult exam, but as my Contracts Professor said to a student who complained about the material in class, "it is law school and it is supposed to be hard."

I don't want a surgeon or doctor having easier requirements, or a pilot or any other professional. The bar is passable I did it after all and it sucked without question, but the exam is hard.

A little disappointed in the bar that they gave in to the complaining of students.

The timing etc should certainly be changed, but making it easier, because a few people cannot pass the exam with the standard of "minimal competence to practice law" is a bad idea.

Instead of making the exam easier maybe they should have just offered it three times a year instead of two, and with a quicker turnaround on grading.

I know people who had to take it more than once, and they eventually passed. What really hurt them was taking the bar in July and having to wait until November to see if they passed, then scrambling to sign up and prepare for the Feb bar of they didn't. It was financially very difficult for some people.

The FAA? Lets not pretend we are anywhere near that important. We're not. We're lawyers. We trumped it up to a JD, but if the bar is what matters then let people with an Associates Degree sit it. That's all that law school was intended to be in the start anyways.

Not to even get into the fact that even with the 3rd day it still has almost no real world application. The MBE tests on stuff that is NOT the law in your home state, I can't imagine a more retarded testing method than that IMHO. Plus actual practice is nothing like any of the 3 sections.

You want to compare it to FAA? Fine. Then make it tested on real life stuff. Make it a real life series of court hearings after real life pretrial draftings for both civil and criminal cases in both district and circuit court. You think the FAA tests on the ground for the license? That's the permit to take the real training that the real test is later done..........IN THE AIR.